Agritrop
Accueil

Tree cover in Central Africa: Determinants and sensitivity under contrasted scenarios of global change

Aleman Julie, Blarquez Olivier, Gourlet-Fleury Sylvie, Bremond Laurent, Favier Charly. 2017. Tree cover in Central Africa: Determinants and sensitivity under contrasted scenarios of global change. Scientific Reports, 7:41393, 12 p.

Article de revue ; Article de revue à facteur d'impact Revue en libre accès total
[img] Version publiée - Anglais
Utilisation soumise à autorisation de l'auteur ou du Cirad.
srep41393.pdf

Télécharger (14MB)

Quartile : Q1, Sujet : MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES

Résumé : Tree cover is a key variable for ecosystem functioning, and is widely used to study tropical ecosystems. But its determinants and their relative importance are still a matter of debate, especially because most regional and global analyses have not considered the influence of agricultural practices. More information is urgently needed regarding how human practices influence vegetation structure. Here we focused in Central Africa, a region still subjected to traditional agricultural practices with a clear vegetation gradient. Using remote sensing data and global databases, we calibrated a Random Forest model to correlatively link tree cover with climatic, edaphic, fire and agricultural practices data. We showed that annual rainfall and accumulated water deficit were the main drivers of the distribution of tree cover and vegetation classes (defined by the modes of tree cover density), but agricultural practices, especially pastoralism, were also important in determining tree cover. We simulated future tree cover with our model using different scenarios of climate and land-use (agriculture and population) changes. Our simulations suggest that tree cover may respond differently regarding the type of scenarios, but land-use change was an important driver of vegetation change even able to counterbalance the effect of climate change in Central Africa.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : forêt, forêt tropicale, utilisation des terres, changement climatique, couverture végétale, couvert forestier, distribution géographique, pastoralisme, sécheresse, déboisement, pratique culturale, télédétection, biodiversité

Mots-clés géographiques Agrovoc : Afrique centrale

Classification Agris : K01 - Foresterie - Considérations générales
P40 - Météorologie et climatologie
E11 - Économie et politique foncières
P01 - Conservation de la nature et ressources foncières
F70 - Taxonomie végétale et phytogéographie
F08 - Systèmes et modes de culture
U30 - Méthodes de recherche

Champ stratégique Cirad : Axe 6 (2014-2018) - Sociétés, natures et territoires

Auteurs et affiliations

  • Aleman Julie, UM2 (FRA)
  • Blarquez Olivier, UQAM (CAN)
  • Gourlet-Fleury Sylvie, CIRAD-ES-UPR BSef (FRA) ORCID: 0000-0002-1136-4307
  • Bremond Laurent, UM2 (FRA)
  • Favier Charly, UM2 (FRA)

Source : Cirad-Agritrop (https://agritrop.cirad.fr/583762/)

Voir la notice (accès réservé à Agritrop) Voir la notice (accès réservé à Agritrop)

[ Page générée et mise en cache le 2024-03-28 ]